According to Richard Dowden, one area in which Nigeria seems to be deficient is political leadership.[1] Nigerians have never agreed – or been given the chance to agree – what Nigeria is.[2] It is a country of several ethnic communities that have co-existed at gunpoint for about 56 years. Nigeria has experienced a civil war and several crises like other African countries. “These [intertribal and intercommunal] wars diminished in number after the turn of the millennium, but their chief cause – the lack of common nationhood – remains. Africa’s nation states were formed by foreigners, lines drawn by Europeans on maps of places they had often never been to. They carved out territories, cut up kingdoms and societies of which they had little idea… They [African countries] lack a common conception of nationhood.”[3]
In the last post, we identified some factors that can bring national greatness when the ethnic communities strengthen their social and industrial values, before deciding to cooperate with other ethnic groups for a progressive and united Nigeria. Also, we exposed the fallacy of do or die unity of Nigeria, which comes in statements like Nigerian unity is non-negotiable. We noted that the Nigerian union of ethnic groups is held at gunpoint and not consent. So, it does not qualify for a true union. The union now requires reevaluation and renegotiation for it to work, otherwise it breaks. In this post, we seek to discuss reasons for calls for disintegration by different sections of the country despite the potential benefits that could be come from the different groups if the nation is properly ordered and united.
Continuing with the marriage analogy, we note that marriage is a union between two whole individuals (a fully developed man and a fully developed woman). When couples who have consented to a marriage had developed themselves properly with full social and economic values, the couple will be happy to have each other and afraid of losing each other. When the wife feels and values her husband, she would not want to lose him to another woman. Also, when the man sees and values his wife, he works hard to keep his wife attracted and attached to him, so that he does not lose her to another man. In each case, when both parties are developed, there will be a mutual appreciation of the union, a mutual respect, a high degree of commitment and compromise for the relationship. But if one party is not improving or contributing to the relationship, the other party loses respect and interest in the relationship. Once the interest in the marriage is lost, the disenchanted party calls for divorce. Even in the olden days’ marriage, when parents chose spouses for their children, the love grew when the couple discovered that each of them had specific values and were continuously improving and contributing their fair share to the relationship.
Before the arrival of the colonial masters, Nigerian ethnic communities lived independently, and were developing at their individual paces. When the colonial masters came, they forced the various ethnic groups together in a suppressed union. They installed and armed their loyal assistants to control this system of democracy among people who have not understood nor accepted its implications. By installing loyalists and imposing democracy, the colonialists laid the foundation for chaos and mismanagement among non-consenting parties in a union that will ensure their colonial access to the various people’s politics and resources.
Before and after the independence, the northern Nigeria sought to pull out of Nigeria as they found little cultural harmony with the other ethnic groups. The northerners were industrious people, who had merged the simplicity of the ancient Hausa empires with the Arabic culture of hard work and faith. They wanted to stay in their region to develop their agriculture based on their interests. After the first military coup in 1966, the Northern top politicians rallied in Lagos to discuss their secession. Yet, the colonialists convinced the northern leaders to stay back, with assurances of benefits for the north in the new formation.
In 1962, there was an internal conflict in the Southwest, which led to the imprisonment of many southwest politicians on different charges ranging from corruption to treason. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Yet, Before the Biafran war in 1967, Ojukwu released Awolowo from prison on the agreement that Awolowo would also take the Yorubas out of Nigeria in protest of Northern domination, while Ojukwu would take the Igbos. Awolowo agreed initially, but after his release from prison, he accepted a proposal from the North to be the highest ranking civilian in Gowon’s administration. The federal government at this time had seen the prospect of the newly discovered oil in the south. This acceptance by Awolowo was criticized by many as betrayal, mainly by easterners. Yet, Awolowo, being a Yoruba nationalist, saw it as a way to get benefits for his people. He is one of the best people in Nigeria, who understood that there was no true nationhood in Nigeria, but an opportunity to develop one’s region. So, while people from other regions selfishly stashed and squandered their funds, Awolowo invested in his people by giving them free education, building roads and bridges, offering top employment and business opportunities.
Following the January 1966 coup that was mainly plotted by eastern officers, and which killed many northern officers and leaders, the North launched a vengeful massacre in the counter-coup in June 1966, killing many Igbo soldiers and extending the massacre to the Igbo civilians till the following year. Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu asked the federal government to halt the eastern massacre. As the massacre continued, Ojukwu announced the secession of the eastern region as the new republic of Biafra. This announcement was seen by the Nigerian government as an attempt to deny it of the prospect of oil benefits, which is masked in the war slogan of “keeping Nigeria one” as a gift from British colonialists. A fight for peace and unity that caused about 2million deaths is no fight for peace and unity, but a fight for other factors, which turned out to be oil.
There might be some truth in the claim that the Biafran independence struggle was an Igbo people’s quest for the sole-possession of oil in a region that still has many unconsented non-Igbos. However, a more urgent concern for the lives of the easterners was paramount. The conditions for unity in the Aburi accord, which was signed by Gowon and Ojukwu stated that the Biafran struggle will die down once the massacre of the easterners ceased, and that each region could own and control its resources and its military. The massacre did not stop until some weeks after the final gun from the Biafran side of the war had been handed over to the federal government. In order to curtail the excesses of the proud and stubborn Igbo, and to perpetuate the Igbo submission, the eastern region was divided in two to create a name which does not appear in any geography textbook, south-south.
After the war, the people from the eastern region were taunted and discriminated, many of their investments were seized outside Igboland. Some Igbos had to change their native names to avoid the discrimination and stigma that went with losing in war. Some Igbo people in the present day River state, Akwa Ibom state and delta state had to deny their Igbo origin in order to disengage themselves from the discrimination that was to be meted out to them as the defeated side of the war.
Millions of innocent people who were killed to keep the one Nigeria marriage have not been commemorated, their killers enjoy one promotion after another, and their surviving relatives received no official condolences or apologies for the murder of their loved ones. The surviving easterners may never recover from the shock and emotional effects of a defeated people in war. Some of them continue to clamor for an exit from the forced marriage to commemorate their dead ancestors, to forge their own path and manage their own lives according to their own culture, values and characters.
Around 1994, Ken Saro Wiwa represented the plight of the Niger-delta people, whose land produced the crude oil that feeds the nation. He called for resource control, liberation of the Niger-delta or a commensurate development for the region that produces the nation’s most valued resources. He was later tried and executed for inciting the global community against the military federal government, but the case was presented as a charge of the murder of the Ogoni nine. Since his death, the federal government, through its military power has carried out many raids and massacre to ensure submission of the people for continued exploitation of resources by foreign companies who pay the government to hold the people for extracting their mineral resources.
Recently, there has been arm struggles and demand for either liberation or development in the region that has been polluted by exploitation by the foreign companies. The Niger Delta Avengers repeatedly strike and destroy the oil installations. These strikes are often done in response to the withdrawal of the funds, scholarships, security and reconstruction contracts for the community on oil installations by the Buhari-led administration. Their present set of conditions for peace seem multi-faceted to be outlined, but can be summarized as demand for justice in distributing the resource-funds from their region to the region.
In summary, many regions are undetermined about their position in Nigeria. Some want to leave the union, but are silently nursing the idea as they are either afraid, or do not know how to say or go about it. Some are vocal about their quest for leaving the union, but have not planned well for the exit.
In response to the question of why secessionist movements and utterances continue to grow, we respond that it is a continued cry for liberty by all communities in Nigeria. Though some regions and persons have borne more of the national injustice, each part of the nation has had its share of injustice, firstly by the colonialists, and further by fellow Nigerians in unison. It is a cycle of violence and oppression, which increases in intensity at every round of revenge.
Colonialists destroyed the faith and values of the ethnic communities by arbitrarily dividing, merging, replacing ethnic groups, cultures, religions and values. So, the socio-industrial mind-set of the different regions and communities were replaced by the introduction of democracy among a people who barely understand each other. The first politicians after independence squandered the trust in governance, while the first coup plotters who were majorly from the east dealt a terrible blow on the psychology of the northern population. The counter-coup plotters dealt a worse, if not the worst blow on the possibility of a united Nigeria, as they tried to take their revenge on the easterners for the first bloody coup. Since after that, it has been one suppression after another; one attack from a region and several counter or worse attacks from the other regions.
It is terrible to be in such a room without an agreement among the inhabitants.
Some in the East and the Niger-Delta ask for freedom from exploitation, oppression and for self-determination. Some in the southwest would prefer to have a cordial alliance with the rest, while some in the middle belt would prefer to be free from the Northern domination. Even some in the north would want a freedom from their leaders, whose focus on oil has blinded them from discovering and developing other human and natural resources in the north and who have not allowed the northern domination of Nigerian politics to reflect in the life, welfare, education, progress and advanced productivity of the average northerner.
Without a rediscovery, reevaluation and modification of the terms and conditions for a true union, the clamor for secession may never cease, but become more aggressive.
[1] cf. Richard Dowden, op. Cit. p445
[2] cf. Richard Dowden, op cit. p.445
[3] Richard Dowden, op. Cit. p3